One of the things I was pretty sure would happen in the months after my book launch is that I would fall into a pit of despair. AND I WAS RIGHT! Woo-hoo!! It was almost exactly like that Atari Game, Pitfall, which I spent hours playing as a kid: You see the quicksand ahead of you and you’re like, neah, I’m gonna clear that shit, I’ve got it this time, just need to grab that rope and swing across. But then you don’t and then you just sink in and you’re like, oh well, fuck it, guess I’ll just hit reset, which for your kid self means eating some Fruity Pebbles, maybe, or riding your bike, or shooting some baskets, but to your adult self means watching Mad Men episodes while alternating alcohol and caffeine until you wake up in September.

I don’t mean to sound dramatic. I mean, it really wasn’t a pit. It was more of a chipmunk hole. A chipmunk hole that had Netflix.

I’ve always admired my dad for his ability to wake up each morning with purpose no matter how overwhelming his life got. And he’s had some overwhelming situations. Two children. Three divorces. Two cancers. Running his own business through it all. I used to think it was just that life never got overwhelming to him somehow. But I figure now that’s probably not really true. I just think he has different brain mechanisms for coping than I do. (I got mine from my mom). During busy or crazy times, he has been known to do the waking up with purpose at 3 or 4 in the morning. Can’t sleep? Well, get up and go get shit done. I don’t operate that way. Even when I’m not deep in a chipmunk hole of despair, if I for some reason wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning during busy times (such as the kind I’m stuck in now), I have absolutely no impulse to get shit done. Mostly, even when I wake up at 10 am full of happy (#notaeuphemism), my wakings come with a fair amount of indecision and panic and cowardice.

Which is why it’s good to have dogs. But that’s another topic.

Look, I’m digressing here. My intent was not to describe to you my despair. It was to show you some photos from the last several months of book happenings.

And ALSO to say that if you have read THIS IS NOT A CONFESSION please go to Amazon or Goodreads and review it. It’s Friday afternoon, after all. What better thing to do?

Here are two handy links to do just that.

 

 

 

These reviews help so much and so I really appreciate everybody who has taken the time to review the book already.

THANK YOU!

And now here are some photos from the last several months of book readings, etc.

Donald Quist is my press-mate at Awst Press. His book Harbors came out in September and here we are after a reading we did together in DC.

And here we are at the reading (which took place at Upshur Street Books) discussing the size of our fonts, as male writers are wont to do.

I then was lucky to read at Jen Michalski’s Baltimore Reading series Starts Here! with several other fine writers. If you’re wondering which one I am, I’m the one holding the beer.

Somebody caught me in my famous “holding dirty laundry pose #33″….

The final DC-area stop was at Nathan Leslie’s “Reston Readings” series where I got to read with Tara Laskowski and Art Taylor. And the wonderful Laura Ellen Scott had the wherewithal to know that I would probably want some documentation of this, so she captured this here photo.

By the way, one thing I’ve realized is important when you are about to go do readings at a bunch of places is to make sure you have a lot of different types of shirts to wear. Notice how these photos make it look like I don’t wear the same shirt every day of my life!

 

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